


Bug

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Humor, James "Rhodey" Rhodes Needs a Hug, M/M, Random & Short, Sam Wilson is a Gift, and gets terrorized by a bug in his very own home, idk bois, the poor man is scared of bugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 03:10:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16778422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Tony drags his ass home from a long meeting only to have Rhodey immediately run behind him and grab his hips, forcing Tony in front of him. “Do you husband duties and kill the bug!” he yells.Sam appears from around the corner with his cell phone out obviously filming. “Rhodey, you’re fine I’m sure the bug isn’t that big,” he says, familiar with how this game goes.“That thing is the size of me and Miles abandoned me with it! We need a new son!” he yells.





	Bug

Tony drags his ass home from a long meeting only to have Rhodey immediately run behind him and grab his hips, forcing Tony in front of him. “Do you husband duties and kill the bug!” he yells. 

Sam appears from around the corner with his cell phone out obviously filming. “Rhodey, you’re fine I’m sure the bug isn’t that big,” he says, familiar with how this game goes.

“That thing is the size of me and Miles _abandoned_ me with it! We need a new son!” he yells.

He lets out a long sigh as Sam starts laughing, presumably again. “Rhodey we’re not disowning our kid because you don’t like that he tried to make you kill your own bug. We’ve talked about this- you’re a grown man, and you’ve fought in actual wars. Bugs are not scarier than people with guns and bombs,” he says calmly.

Rhodey looks at him like he’s nuts. “You wanna know what happens when you shoot people? They go _down_ , same if you blow ‘em up. Wanna know what happens if you smack a bug off the ceiling? Fucking nothing because those little bastards don’t even take fall damage and they’re faster than me. _Get the bug_! This suburban shit is not for me, Tony, we are moving back to the city there were _no_ bugs in your penthouse.”

Sam has doubled over, taking the phone with him and he’s laughing so hard he’s silent. “Rhodey, there are bugs everywhere- you have to deal with this.”

“I will file for divorce if you do not march your beautiful mayonnaise ass into that kitchen to kill that bug _right now_ , Tony.”

He’s serious too, this has also happened before and Tony doesn’t want to explain to a divorce lawyer why ‘he didn’t kill the bug’ is the reason for a divorce. “This is why Miles abandoned you,” he mumbles.

“Well that’s fine, I abandoned him too, he’s cancelled. I have no time for ungrateful children who do not realize that they need to repay my love and support with bug killing duties,” Rhodey says. “Go get the bug.” He prods Tony forward a little and he lets out another sigh.

“Baby, what makes you think the bug is still where you left it?”

Rhodey freezes in terror for a moment before frantically looking around. “Why you say something like that you _know_ how I feel about bugs!”

Sam continues wheezing away but he’s repointed the camera at him and Rhodey. Tony rubs his temples. “Honey, you need therapy to deal with bugs we can’t keep killing them for you. Hey, wait a second why the fucking haven’t _you_ killed the bug?” he asks Sam.

“And miss this comedy? _Hell_ no, this is way too funny to watch,” he says.

Rhodey gives him an offended look and turns to Tony, “you see what kind of rude ass friends you keep? That’s disrespectful!”

“Baby. Sam is _your_ friend,” Tony reminds him. Its not like _he’s_ the one who found Sam through the military that’s Rhodey’s deal.

“He sure shit isn’t now,” Rhodey mumbles. “Now kill. That. Bug.”

Sure, he could argue but what’s the point of that? So he goes into the kitchen and Rhodey leaves him at the doorway, apparently no longer willing to risk the bug while Sam follows him inside. “Its on the counter,” Rhodey tells him, half hiding behind the kitchen doorway.

“I don’t need you to be a back seat bug killer, honey. This is not the first bug I’ve killed for you,” he points out.

“Well you have a thirty nine percent fail rate and the bug reappearance rate is eleven percent so you need to _kill_ that shit!” Rhodey tells him.

Sam lets out another loud wheeze, “he did the fucking math!”

“Damn right I did, I need to know who is the most efficient bug killer in this household. Miles has a seventy percent fail rate, that kid can’t kill bugs for _shit_. We should have another one- maybe that one will know how to kill bugs. Or could get a cat, they kill bugs, right?”

For a moment Tony allows himself to imagine a life where Rhodey is not a crazy person who does the actual math on who has the best bug killing success. Things are blissful, Miles does not have to abandon his father, a grown ass man, to kill his own bugs and Tony does not have to come home to a whole ass husband screaming about bugs. But then that wouldn’t be Rhodey and as much as this fear is ridiculous he does love his husband very much.

“Honey, you’re allergic to cats so we’re not getting a cat and we aren’t having another kid because Miles isn’t good at _killing_ _bugs_. Now take a breath because I am going to kill this bug,” he tells Rhodey.

Rhodey lets out a small little gasp and hides behind the doorway further and honest to god the spider isn’t even that big and mostly seems to be minding its own business even if its on the counter. Tony looks around but Miles must have run off with the room’s Designated Fly Swatter so he grabs a plate and smashes it over the spider. Rhodey lets out a loud yelp, “why would you smash it with a plate, Tony!”

“There was no fly swatter,” he says as Sam starts wheezing again.

Rhodey looks at him like he’s nuts. “That’s not a logical _solution_ , baby.” He’s looking at the counter with more concern than Tony thinks is strictly necessary and Sam is trying his best to point the camera while laughing. “That spider is dead, right?” Rhodey asks.

Tony looks over to the spider amongst the plate chunks. “Yeah, honey, its dead.”

Rhodey lets out a loud sigh of relief and leans into the doorway. “Oh my god, that was _stressful_ I thought I was going to die today, damn. Get that plate out of here, I want nothing to do with that. And get rid of that counter too, that thing is deleted, send it to Guatemala I don’t give a shit just get it out of the country. We are moving from the suburbs, I don’t care if we have to send Miles to a different school I can _not_ handle these suburban bugs. White people are brave, a little too brave, you guys got cocky after colonization.”

Tony lets out a long sigh, “Rhodey, no one is going to eat off a broken plate. We already had to throw it out and the counter stays.”

Rhodey gives him a _look_ , “are you suggesting that we’d _keep_ that plate if it didn’t break? What is wrong with you! And we’re not keeping that counter either, I know what happened on it- I can’t eat from that anymore.” He gives the counter a distressed look and Tony sighs.

“You wouldn’t even know the difference.” He knows this because this is not the first time he’s used an unconventional weapon to kill bugs and Rhodey never notices after he forgets a bug was killed with it. Or if Tony fake buys a new umbrella so Rhodey won’t keep getting soaked in the rain because he killed a bug with the last umbrella. Not that he’ll fill Rhodey in on that detail because if he did then Rhodey would probably buy all new everything in an attempt to avoid bug taint.

“Would so- I’d be able to feel its evil energies,” he says and Tony lets out a _long_ sigh.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means bugs give off evil energies and I can sense it,” Rhodey says, way too serious about such a stupid statement. Sam lets out another round of laughter at that.

*

Miles looks unimpressed, which isn’t unusual for a fourteen year old boy, but when he walks over with purpose Tony suspects something’s up. “Dad, why are a meme?” he asks Rhodey. Rhodey looks up from the tablet he’s reading the news from- also something Tony has killed a bug with not that Rhodey knows that’s the same tablet- and frowns.

“What?”

Miles holds out his phone and sure enough there’s a picture of Rhodey’s face when he’d told Tony that killing bugs with plates isn’t a logical solution. The caption on it is ‘when something isn’t a logical solution’ and Tony largely suspects its being used as a reaction image. “Huh, I didn’t think people would find that as funny as Sam,” he says. He’d posted the video to YouTube and said people thought it was hilarious but frankly Sam is as prone to exaggeration as Rhodey. He’s _married_ to Bucky and he still complains that he’s the worst human to exist ever in the history of humanity. To be fair Bucky seems to share that sentiment.

“People love this video. Also you’re a meme too,” he tells Tony, taking his phone back for a moment and extending it again. Tony looks exceptionally _done_ in the picture, clearly exhausted with Rhodey’s freaking out over bugs and people seem to find it funny.

“Why is your face looking like that? I was in danger and you’re out there looking like I was inconveniencing you? What kind of husband are you?” Rhodey asks, offended.

“Yeah, I think the reason people find this so funny is because you aren’t the typical Mulder vs Scully kind of opposites. Like the straight shooting guy smashed a bug with a plate and like... even the people watching this for the first time know that’s not the first time you’ve done something like that. So now you guys are weird vs weirder,” Miles says and Tony is genuinely impressed and also confused by the amount of time Miles has spent analyzing this. But then he’s spent a strange amount of time directing every piece of every Star Wars movie too. They came out when Tony was a kid but _shit_ he has nothing on Miles’ love for the Star Wars universe.

“I don’t care why I’m a meme, how do I stop that?” Rhodey asks.

Of all the years of dealing with Tony’s fame he seriously asks that? “Memes go by fast, relax,” he tells Rhodey.

“If you don’t want to be a meme get therapy for the bugs. You got one measly ass bug in your ear as a kid and now you’re trying to convince us all to send the counter to _Guatemala_ ,” Mile says, shaking his head.

Rhodey gives him an offended look. “ _Excuse_ you, that was a traumatic event!”

“We know that, we’re living with the fallout and I do _not_ have a seventy percent fail rate!”

“You do so, and those bugs have a seventeen percent reappearance rate. And you know what, this is all _your_ fault,” he tells Tony and he frowns.

“What _?_ How the hell is this _my_ fault?” he asks.

“If you had’ve listened to me when I told you about the bug in my ear none of this would have happened!”

Oh yeah it would have but Tony isn’t going to argue about that. “Rhodey you didn’t tell me anything about the bug, you were screaming about helicopters in your ear.”

“That was me telling you about the bug! It was so loud in there flapping around!” He shudders and makes a face.

“Helicopters don’t fit in _ears_ , Rhodey! How the hell was I supposed to know?”

He rolls his eyes, “oh what the hell else could it have been?” he asks.

Tony rolls his eyes, “I don’t know, I thought you dropped acid or something.”

Rhodey squints at him. “We were eleven, Tony. What kind of eleven year old drops acid?”

Miles lets out an annoyed noise, “who cares about the circumstances of the bug. You have been in _war zones_ but its a _bug_ that did you in? That’s not _logical_ , dad. Get therapy so you can kill your own bugs.”

Rhodey stands, “I will sooner die in hell fire than kill my own bugs.”

Tony sighs and resolves to tell JARVIS to post this to YouTube too and Miles can deal with being the next ‘that’s not _logical_ ’ meme.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


End file.
